During the first time I visited the Hackfall Wood in North Yorkshire the fountain wasn’t working – not that I knew of the fountain before I arrived. This time, however, it was. As I understand it, there is a small reservoir on the hill behind it, when the reservoir fills a valve opens and the water swooshes down to end in the fountain. It’s between 10 to 20 minutes to fill the reservoir which gives an activation of around 1 minute. The reservoir is filled by a small beck, which I guess would rush down the hillside anyway, (eroding it over time, no doubt).
As it happens, this is, with a few others I took at the time, probably one of the worst outcomes I’ve had – I used a graduated ND filter to bring the sky into the exposure range, in front of a circular polariser to cut down on the glare, and I used f/22 on a focal length of 17mm. Unfortunately, I forgot to take into account that the grad filter is now quite scratched, which meant each frame showed up nearly all the scratches – thank goodness for photoshop. I will have to carry out some tests to see if I can still use the filter at lower apertures/longer focal lengths – or discard the thing altogether. Unfortunately, the filters are not cheap to replace.
——Stephen——
Stephen G Hipperson 